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From: dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Noun-Verb vs. Verb-Noun
Message-ID: <41718@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 20 Oct 90 00:25:20 GMT
References: <3648@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
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In article <3648@syma.sussex.ac.uk> ianr@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Ian Rogers) writes:
>
>Briefly the question was: is there any effective (or even affective
>for the philosophers out there) difference between the Noun-Verb and
>Verb-Noun interface metaphors.
>
>        [The Mac is Noun-Verb: eg. you pick up a file (Noun) and put
>    it in the waste basket (delete, Verb), whereas the (at least)
>    graphics part of FrameMaker is Verb-Noun: you select line drawing
>    mode and then draw one. Command line languages are Verb-Noun]
>
>I'd love some references (preferable) or educated opinions (also valuable).
>

Noi Sukaviriya and Lucy Moran, grad students in Jim Foley's group at George
Washington University, conducted a very interesting study of verb-object
or object-verb PREFERENCES among subjects.  The study was published in:

Sukaviriya, Pinyawadee, and Moran, Lucy, 1990.  User interfaces for Asian 
countries.  In Nielson, Jakob, editor.  Designing Interfaces for International 
Use.  Elsevier Science Publishers.

Briefly (and from memory), they tested subjects who were native speakers of
English, of Thai, and of languages from the Indian sub-continent.  (Like 
English, Thai expresses most commands and queries with a verb-object
sequence, whereas the Indian language(s) tested were the opposite.)  Subjects
were not told what order to use in a drawing/coloring task.  Some were tested
with direct manipulation (mouse) and others with keybord entry.  There were
no significant differences between Thai and English speakers' sequence 
preferences, but the Indian-language speakers reveresed the prefered 
sequence on at least some tasks.

I should probably stop here, and refer you to the authors, or their article, 
or find my copy!  But the point is that user preferences seems to be
associated with word-order for the users' native language and with the exact
task.  This seems to be a very rich and hardly-explored topic within HCI/CHI!

David Mark
dmark@sun.acsu.buffalo.edu